The site at Kilgulbin is tentatively identified as a trivallate ecclesiastical enclosure, meaning it was surrounded by three concentric boundary banks, a form associated with early Irish monasticism where the multiplying of enclosures could signal the relative importance or sanctity of the space within. Most visitors walking across this kind of landscape would see little more than gentle rises in the ground, but measured carefully, those rises tell a fairly specific story.

The innermost zone contains a square stone enclosure and what appear to be the buried foundations of a church, along with scattered mounds and depressions where stones break through the surface. Around this sits a middle bank, on average eight metres wide and half a metre high, which curves through the eastern and southern sides of the site. On the exterior of this middle bank to the east, a semi-circular structure has been identified, its interior measuring roughly 22 metres north to south and 17 metres east to west. Further out, the middle bank divides to the south, forming a sub-oval area nearly 56 metres across. The outermost bank survives only in fragments, traceable from the east around towards the west, but where the middle and outer banks separate there is a gap some 30 metres wide, which may represent the original entrance to the monastic enclosure. The site is situated just north-west of a small stream that flows to the north-east, the kind of modest watercourse that early religious communities routinely sought out when choosing where to settle. The description of the site draws on C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995.